A Tandem Tour of CZ and Austria

Prague, Czech Republic
Monday, May 24, 2004

Our first full day in Prague brought surprisingly blue skies! We headed down to the breakfast room not sure what to expect. To our surprise there was a very nice breakfast buffet, complete with meats, cheeses, rolls, yogurt, etc. Touring the castle was chief on our agenda for today and we wanted to get an early start to avoid the long lines of which we'd read. So, we were out the door by 8:00. The main square was very empty and few people were up and about the city (certainly no tourists at this early hour!). The Charles Bridge was empty and we enjoyed the freedom to take photos of it without people being everywhere. We crossed the bridge and headed up a long flight of old stone stairs that led to the castle, where we found several tour groups already in evidence. Definitely good to get there early!

We bought our tickets and toured the cathedral, which is one of the nicest we've seen in Europe. The castle grounds include a cathedral, residences and other associated buildings. A portion of the castle also serves as the main offices of the present-day leadership of the country. For some reason we decided to climb the cathedral tower (all 287 steps). We thought the steps would never end, but finally we reached the top and had a really nice view of the castle compound, the Vltava River, and the city. The small circular staircase is very narrow and has two-way traffic, which made the climb up and down challenging and left us gasping at the top and dizzy at the bottom. While at the top we noticed that dark clouds were on the horizon and it looked like we were likely to lose our beautiful blue skies.

We toured the rest of the castle buildings, including a small house where the writer Franz Kafka lived, and then walked back through the castle gardens to the front gate, where we witnessed the changing of the guards. Then down the "little quarter" main street, replete with its hordes of tourists and tourist shops. On our way back to the old town we crossed the Charles Bridge, now teeming with visitors and various vendors selling their wares. Quite a difference from the morning!

It was getting late and we hadn't found any place to grab a quick lunch, so when we passed a KFC we decided to stop in and get lunch there (95ck each). While some travel purists may ridicule us for occasionally eating at an American-style fast-food restaurant, the fact is that they are one of the few quick places to eat when you are on the go and you want to sit down out of bad weather. Plenty of Europeans seem to feel the same way, and we've found that the food in the European versions of places like KFC and McDonald's is usually much better than their USA counterparts. We rarely eat in fast-food restaurants in the USA, but aren't as opposed to it in Europe. Besides, we eat at enough non-touristy places to balance out a few fast-food indiscretions!

After lunch we wandered over to the Jewish Quarter (Josevof). Most of the sites in this area require the purchase of a ticket/pass. We really were only interested in seeing the cemetery, and it was getting late, so we decided not to purchase the pass. From Josevof we found our way to the fashionable Parizska (Paris) Street, with big-label fashion boutiques and beautifully redone buildings.

We stopped back at the pension briefly to regroup and relax for a bit, then went back out to buy maps for our bike ride the next few days. We went to several outdoor and bike stores (conveniently, right near our pension), but none had all the maps we needed. A bike shop employee directed us with very sketchy hand directions to a map store. We weren't optimistic about finding the place, but we wandered off in the general direction he suggested and miraculously found it in a locals-only shopping district. It had most of the maps we needed, except for the one covering the area around Prague (which everyone else was out of, too; the clerk explained that it was backordered from the company).

After the map store we wandered around a bit more and found a bakery where we procured an enticing-looking rum-flavored whipped-cream pastry that we split while sitting on a bench in the middle of Wenceslas Square. Although it’s called a "square," it's really a large boulevard flanked by all manner of stores and hotels. It was hard to picture thousands of Czech citizens clogging the square in 1989 prior to the Velvet Revolution and the end of the Communist regime.

On the way back to the pension to drop off our maps we stopped in another book store and found that they had one remaining copy of the Prague-area Shocart bike map, which we bought. Had dinner at a touristy restaurant near the main square, where we ordered a fixed-price menu with goulash. Again, an incredibly small portion of meat, but tasty. They also tacked on the "cover charge." After dinner we headed back to the room to pack and get ready for our early train the next morning.

Daily costs 5/24 (in CK): Pension: 1400; lunch: 190; dinner: 400; snacks/drinks: 45; castle ticket: 440; biking maps: 440; postcards: 28. Total: 2943 CK ($112 US).